How To Improve As Subtlety Rogue — The War Within (11.1.7)

Subtlety Rogue is all about maximizing short burst windows by combining as many of your cooldowns as possible it very important that you're using your cooldowns together. At first it might feel weird to have cooldowns be available and not use them immediately, since the vast majority of other specs do that, but for Subtlety its typically fine as long as its not Flagellation and Shadow Blades. You have to realize Subtlety does absolutely no damage whatsoever outside of Shadow Dance, the only thing you are interested in outside cooldowns is to setup your next cooldown window by either farming cooldown reduction on Shadow Dance by using combo points, preserving set stacks, holding charges of Shadow Dance/ Symbols of Death or holding onto Coup de Grace.

Following the Burst Sequence listed under the rotation page is key to this. Every single Flagellation and Shadow Blades usage should have 2 Symbols of Death, 2 Shadow Dances and 2 Secret Techniques. It is better to slightly overcap on Shadow Dance cooldown reduction and sit on 2 charges for a while than to use it too often and subsequently dont have enough to use 2 of them back to back during your Shadow Blades.

It is impossible to correctly play and optimize a Subtlety Rogue without using Raidbots to sim your own character, there are simply too many variables involved to intuitively figure out what gear to wear and so on without simming it first. Generally speaking, a simulation should be the first and final say in the gear you end up wearing for any given situation.

On top of this, simming is now very easy, with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn, and the Raidbots website. Below, you can find a video on how to sim your own character using the website.